The Missouri Compromise (1820)


Article - The Missouri Compromise

1803 - The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory (828,000 sq miles) from France for $15 million in cash and loan cancellation.   Today's state of Louisiana was created in 1812, the rest becomes the Missouri Territory.
          



Prior to 1820, there was a tacit agreement to admit states in free/slave pairs:  Vermont & Kentucky,  Ohio & Tennessee, Indiana and Louisiana, Illinois & Mississippi.  

1810 - 1820 - Southern planters go into Missouri to grow hemp.  The slave population increases from 3,000 to 10,000.  Total population is about 66,000 by 1820.  Hemp is the major slave produced product.

1819 (February).  Missouri's application for statehood is taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives.  Entry as a slave state is expected.  At this point there is 11 free states and 11 slaves states in the Union.  The balance of power in Congress is at issue.


Congressman James Tallmadge, Jr. of New York  submits two amendments to Missouri's bid for statehood:

Provided, that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been fully convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years. 


On March 19, the 15th Congress ended the session with the House passing both amendments and the Senate blocking both.  The issue was stalemated.  During the summer northern state legislatures passed bills vowing to fight for a "free Missouri."  Southern politicians began talking about secession.

The 16th Congress met in December, 1819. When the free-soil District of Maine offered its petition for statehood, the Senate quickly linked the Maine and Missouri bills, making Maine admission a condition for Missouri entering the Union with slavery unrestricted.  Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois added a compromise proviso, excluding slavery from all remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36° 30′  parallel.  The combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by those Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri.  



Speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky, in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills.  Clay and his pro-compromise allies succeeded in pressuring half the anti-restrictionist House Southerners to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso, while maneuvering a number of restrictionist House northerners to acquiesce in supporting Missouri as a slave state.  The Tallmadge non-slavery amendment was defeated by three votes, 90-87.

This was the Missouri Compromise.  It passed Congress on May 5, 1820 and President James Monroe signed it into law on May 6.  But then Missouri submitted a proposed constitution that would bar the entry of "free negroes and mulattoes" into the state and the wrangling began again and once again Clay persuaded Congress to have Missouri remove the restriction.  Missouri finally gained statehood on August 10, 1821.

The compromise was popular among the majority of the people, but there were dissenters.  Many southern politicians were upset about the 36° 30′  line although Arkansas would soon be admitted and the territory north of the line was unlikely to be settled for decades.  Some anti-slavery northerners were upset because of the admission of a new slave state.   

One southern politician saw it as a sign of a coming tragedy:

"...but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.  I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.  A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper."   Thomas Jefferson, April 22, 1820. 







 

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